Well that was an epic bottle job for me.
First thing: I’m not a fan of rotation and have been consistent on that point. Our spine played like they hadn’t played together for ages, which they hadn’t. All of the players coming back - Walmsley, Knowles, Coote - made horrendous errors. Coote, especially, had his worst game in a Saints shirt by miles.
But I’m not sure that covers it. I’m not convinced this team has enough winners in it. It looked like Coote might be the man to calm this team down in the pressure situations, but today we just completely wilted under pressure and reverted to our big match type - making it up on the fly and trying to score on every set, and Coote was arguably the worst culprit. Add to that the fact that we knocked on three times at first receiver and you have it in a nutshell.
I’d love to say that we’ll make amends by winning the GF, but if we get there I will be expecting us to lose. We need to add at least one real winner to this team.